out of file descriptors... mystery

[Alex LeDonne]

On 9/6/07, Randy Melder <randymelder at gmail.com> wrote:
> Group,
>
> I tried up'ing my qty of file descriptors because Apache won't start
> after about 547 virtual hosts.  I thought I up'd my file-max, but it's
> not helping. My analysis shows that I have 200000 available files and
> I have 832 open. However, Apache won't start unless I comment out the
> ErrorLog and AccessLog lines in the virtual host directives. The file
> paths are all correct and there are no syntax errors in the virtual
> hosts. I can add more virtual hosts as long as they do not reference
> log files.
>
> Recon:
>
> [root at localhost ~]# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max
> 200000
>
> [root at localhost ~]# cat /proc/sys/fs/file-nr
> 832     0       200000
>
> [root at localhost ~]# lsof | wc -l
> 2315
>
> Am I totally barking up the wrong tree? Help?
>
> ; ) .randy

Is apache running as root? Or as some other user? What's that user's
limit on file descriptors according to ulimit (as opposed to the
filesystem limit)? 547 is suspiciously close to 512, * 2 logs per
vhost = 1024 = default file descriptor limit for most users.

-A